


Silence Falls on a Fallen Barricade.

by Team_Starkid



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alone, Canon Era, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Post-Barricade, Sorry Jehan, jehan survives!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2018-11-30 14:04:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11465121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Team_Starkid/pseuds/Team_Starkid
Summary: As if absolutely nothing had changed, the night of June the fifth slid into the morning of June the sixth: for despite the world ending, it continued on, as it always did.Jehan wakes, mourning dawning with morning. Even his poet's gaze can find no beauty in the massacre.





	1. Chapter 1

As if absolutely nothing had changed, the night of June the fifth slid into the morning of June the sixth: for despite the world ending, it continued on, as it always did.

The sun was so radiant that it almost woke the dead.

Rays poured around the streets of Paris, weaving their way around the ramshackle barricade towering into a great wooden Frankenstein’s monster. Each limb and thread was being torn away, unstitched and thrown to the ground, the hideously beautiful structure being ripped into oblivion. By the time night set not a trace would remain that a barricade ever stood. 

Steps away, in a tucked away alleyway, there was a body curled around the pavement, pressed against the cobbles in a desperate embrace, peaceful face disturbed only by an outbreak of freckles, sunflower orange hair streaming around his form in sheathes of delicate wheat. A poppy of blood bloomed from his temple, with lavender bruises tracing the contours of his face, marring his loveliness. His chest, emblazoned with delicately patterned silk – too elegant to lie in the gutter – was pulsing shallowly.

The man scrounging in the sleeping boy’s pockets noticed none of these things, beside the fineness of his clothes, and jumped terribly when the boy sat up sharply. The thief held pennies in his hand.

“Good morning,” the boy said pleasantly, for Jehan Prouvaire had never said an unkind word in his life. The thief scrambled away, frantically scrabbling over the stone road, holding Prouvaire’s savings in his fingers. _I have my waistcoat –_ Prouvaire thought to himself – _and I have this glorious sky.  A life in the sewers offers neither – let him have my coin._

After noticing his waistcoat and the immense shade of the sky, he noticed that he was very much alive, yet had determined a few hours before such would not be the case.

Jehan had been captured at the barricade, grabbed by the hair and hoisted away from his allies. His capture was not unexpected, nor was his looming death, as when one decides to start a rebellion against government forces with only a few students to fight in it, death is a sealed guarantee. Jehan was the kind of man to risk everything for principle alone: if tomorrow could be brighter without him in it, the sacrifice seemed small. This was why when he faced half a dozen guardsmen: all polished in red and blue and brass, guns aimed steadily at him, like dancers the moment before the music began, Jehan had said: “Vive la France! Long live France! Long live the Future!”

He had always had a penchant for inspirational and poetic last words, but as he groggily stared around the alleyway he realised he had not uttered them yet, despite his impassioned speech sung hours before.

From the thick, sticky patch of blood on his forehead, where pain blossomed and trickled through him steadily, he could deduce that the butt of a rifle had been swung into his head and forced him into unconsciousness, leaving him trapped in the alleyway for hours.

Why the guardsmen had spared him he did not know, he had been ready and willing to die, but they instead had left him alive: such a mercy was rare for the National Guard.

Unbeknownst to Jehan, his “final” words had alighted something in the leading guardsman: no rebellious feelings to join the barricade, but _something_ nevertheless. France's people were dissatisfied with their situation, everyone knew that, even the guardsmen were irked, but they continued to do their job anyway - the same as butchers slaughtered, and revolutionaries threw themselves into the flames, the National Guard killed and died without question. When the guard stood before Jehan, looking upon the boy who had grown too fast, ready to spill his blood for the future, it struck the guard's core terribly, as he suddenly had the thought that France’s future would _be_ Jehan Prouvaire and his friends if they survived the night. He lifted his gun, not seeing an ounce of fear in Prouvaire’s eyes, just steely determination and a distant, resigned look, far sadder than any tears or weeping.  With a heavy blow, the man had hit Prouvaire over the head, sending him sprawling backwards into the gutter, and he had fired a shot into the air, turning back to the other guards and directing them all back towards their station. His plan had worked because Jehan had woken to see the future, but as he was slowly trying to gain balance, the future looked far too similar to the past.

The staunch silence filled him with abject dread.

Silence falls on no barricade unless it, too, has fallen.   

Stumbling drunkenly into the open, Prouvaire briefly thought of the Musain and imagined a strong drink that would burn his throat could somehow be of help: Grantaire had always lauded its medicinal properties, and Joly had always brightly agreed: which was a stamp of approval on any medical issue. His vision blurred a little and he saw Joly tutting over his head wound, promising him that death was looming unless he cleaned it out.  

“Stop,” Prouvaire slurred, batting away the invisible hand of his friend. It didn’t take him long to realise he was probably concussed. He wanted nothing more than to rest himself back on the pavement, and he was halfway there, knees scraping sharply on the cobbles, before he hoisted himself back up and continued.

The only thing pushing him forwards was the distant memory of Gavroche’s small face, tilted back in death, eyes blown forever wide in endless shock. Prouvaire was a poet, and searched for beauty in everything, but even _he_ could find no beauty in the small boy’s step into death; he only found honour too big for Gavroche’s tiny body.

Past the barricade, the first thing Jehan Prouvaire saw was an enormous scarlet flag, fluttering limply in the lame, morning breeze. His heart made a premature leap. His eyes traced up and caught sight of a pale hand still intertwined in the flag, unmoving. Prouvaire almost dared not look further, but he was a brave man and reluctantly did so, a sick feeling churning deep within his stomach.

Enjolras.

Prouvaire stumbled backwards, a silent scream etched on his face. If he could only draw in enough air he could make a noise, but it was as though his internal organs had decided to shut themselves down.

Their daring leader, Enjolras, was hanging upside down from a window, fervour somehow still captured on his lovely face despite death clouding him.

Prouvaire choked a sob, but he could not draw his eyes away. Enjolras was a fallen angel, breathtakingly indescribable and untouchable: despite the eight bullet holes peppering his chest, Jehan expected Enjolras to pull himself back up and instil a little more life into the limp flag. If Enjolras had persuaded the weather to obey him, it would not have shocked Jehan one ounce, for listening to Enjolras talk was like listening to birdsong in the morning: suddenly out of darkness, sense came to light. Prouvaire grazed his face against the wall, pain ripping at his throat as he tried to imagine Enjolras back to life. He was just a poet: he had no such powers.

Enjolras deserved to be cradled by Jehan and laid in a glass coffin filled with roses, such a beauty only seemed fitting to Prouvaire, but he knew that Enjolras would end up nailed in a wooden box, never worthy of his brilliance. It would have been what Enjolras wanted: he cared not for flashy displays of personality, but Jehan was filled with the deepest of remorse when he managed to look at him once more.

It was poetry in itself. If the silence had not alerted Prouvaire of the barricades fall, the sight of Enjolras draped from a sill like liquid gold certainly did.

Jehan ran, not caring if the National Guard was still lurking to seek out insubordinates, he burst through the door hanging on its hinges and stormed up the broken stairs, his clattering sounding like the loudest noise in the universe.

When he reached the room, he first thought that a thief was pillaging in Enjolras’ pockets, and was ready to fling the criminal from the window in rage, but in the dim light he saw that the figure was as still as the night.

One arm was following Enjolras out of the window, reaching after him in never fulfilled longing. The rest of the male form was crouched at where Enjolras’ feet would have been: it was Grantaire’s final worship of his Apollo.

“R,” Prouvaire whispered, as if he could somehow hear. He flung himself towards his friend, knees and calves tearing across the rough wooden floorboards.

Prouvaire had not cried once in the whole rebellion, but the moment he touched Grantaire’s skin he could not stop himself.

Grantaire was ever so wild, hair dark and thick in curls of midnight, his skin was rough and kissed with stubble, bags fell under his ever sleeping eyes. He had always been rather ugly, in a rugged sort of fashion, a nose too big for his face and broken a few too many times: but in death Grantaire looked peaceful.

In life, filled with alcohol, he had looked happy in a melancholy way, a fervent anxiety still clear in his small, dark eyes. Grantaire’s final purpose had been fulfilled and his melancholy and anxiety had fled alongside the other tribulations of the living. Prouvaire sobbed openly, embracing Grantaire and laying him out on his back. Prouvaire sat for a long time, staring upon his once friend and vowing to look away once the tears dried, but they would not dry, and Prouvaire instead fixed R’s hair, billowing it around his head and straightened his cravat. He watched for moments more, urging movement into the lukewarm skin beside him, before ruining the curls and unknotting the cravat: Grantaire would never have looked so neat, he would not in life and nor would he in death.

“What is the point, my dear friend?” he had said to Prouvaire once, smoking deeply. His slender fingers handed the pipe to Jehan and unravelled the coil of his hair, “It is no sin to be a little wild,” he reasoned, “and if it is, then Heaven does not appeal to me in the slightest.”

“Order may be easier to paint,” Jehan agreed, “but wilderness remains an ill-tempered yet far more beautiful muse.”

Now, tears swelling down his face, he clawed for order – philosophical conversations of life and death and wilderness rang hollow in the face of the truth. He turned to the window and found how Enjolras had been saved from crumpling to the distant ground: the great leader’s limbs were entangled in the flag and the flag was entangled in the balustrades and held him afloat in the air. The sight was entangled in Prouvaire’s mind.  

Prouvaire lifted Enjolras gingerly by the legs, heaving upwards, trying to protect him as gently as he could. With a fumble he almost let Enjolras slip away, but would have flung himself from the window to save Enjolras’ body had that have happened. The fumble caused Enjolras’ boot to dislodge itself between Prouvaire’s chest and arm. The shoe clattered noisily to the floor.

He continued to drag, hearing a terrible crunch halfway through, Prouvaire sobbed more, finally getting Enjolras’ torso into reach and hugging it like a child. He stumbled, Enjolras’ weight heavy and limp in his arms.

Something felt so terribly wrong. Prouvaire had lifted Grantaire before, because Grantaire had a penchant for getting too drunk to walk and relying on Jehan’s good nature to guide him home.  Enjolras however, had never authorized much contact with anyone, a brisk clap on the back was about as warm as his physical affections remained. For Jehan to be touching Enjolras at all felt like an invasion, to be supporting his entire body was wrong beyond measure.  Enjolras’ head lolled backwards, stark blue eyes staring fiercely at the ceiling, lips parted in an unanswerable question. Jehan lowered him gently, one hand curled around his neck, tangled in his hair so that his head landed softly on the floorboards. He knelt as quietly as he could, reaching to draw Enjolras’ eyelids closed. Suddenly Enjolras’ cheeks were painted with red streaks. Prouvaire let out a shaky breath, staring at his own hands which were caked in blood, trembling like he held earthquakes in his veins. Horrified, he stared once more before his whole body dissolved into sobs, only the word “no” escaping from his lips as he clawed at Enjolras’ lapels and tried to wake him. His voice was a wavering note of an out-of-tune violin, piercing into the hollow room with the despair that only true hopelessness could bring. 

What of the revolution when its rightful leader lay dead on some dusty floorboards? What of revolution if even Enjolras could not bring it about?

After deafeningly long minutes of crying, Prouvaire felt bile rise in his throat and he lurched back from the two dead men, bloody fingers clasped over his mouth. He could only take the time to notice that their hands had fallen back together before fleeing the scene and leaving the pair to slumber in peace.

 As if sleepwalking, Jehan tripped across the hallway, lungs constricting again as he saw another fallen friend. _Courfeyrac._ Prouvaire lunged forwards and found six bodies scattered over the room like fallen castles, discarded pawns in a chess set, young boys sleeping in their own blood. Jehan could not take it. He collapsed to the floor, head feeling foggier with each moment.

Courfeyrac grinned at him and said, “Ah. Prouvaire! Glad to see you could join us all!”

“You’re dead,” Jehan said blearily. Courfeyrac laughed, and then Combeferre did and then Joly and Feuilly and Bossuet.

“You should be too,” said Courfeyrac.

“I know,” Prouvaire moaned, his eyes fluttering shut like the wings of a frantic moth, “God, I know.”

~*~

When he awoke, he blearily heard the thumping of feet up stairs. He assumed it was the National Guard and let his eyes slide back shut: too weary to even hide from death. Next he heard a sharp intake of breath and a female cry. He opened one eye, for the National Guard did not usually employ women. A girl no older than him stood in the doorway, dressed in long skirts of dusty cream, dark skin contrasting with the brightness of her dress, a mane of hair springing from its heavy constraints.

“Musichetta,” groaned Jehan, shifting across the floor.

“Oh my Lord!” she cursed, grasping at her skirts and rushing to Jehan, “Prouvaire, my dear man, you’re alive. Oh God! Are you injured?”

“My heart and soul will never heal, but my person is untarnished by the bullet wounds that our friends have befallen,” he watched tears bludgeon her cheeks.

“Have any others survived? Please, Jehan, say it is not just you!” she began, looking across the room. In an instant she had dropped Prouvaire’s hand and staggered away. 

“ _Joly,”_ she wept, “Joly, please, wake up, my God! Joly!” she looked around and saw her other lover sprawled beside and let out a piercing scream. “Bossuet, please!” Her grief was loud and messy, spilling through the house, turning it from a quiet grave to a place of abject mourning.  “Oh Jehan,” she moaned, “Tell me, what did you fight for?”

“We fought for freedom,” Prouvaire said sadly, trying to look solely at Musichetta and not at the corpses surrounding him, “But I am dreadfully afraid that they died for nothing.” His voice wavered and cracked, splitting down the middle, fraught with memories of Enjolras and his dynamic passion, and his dead, blue eyes, no longer seeing the future, not seeing anything; of Grantaire, naught to be cynical about but the afterlife, wherein hopefully he would find more peace; of Combeferre, who had his weeks planned out by the hour, plans to remain forever unfulfilled; of Courfeyrac, too light and joyful to even know of death, lying dead beside him; of Feuilly, of Joly, of Bossuet, of Bahorel, of Marius.

 He scanned the room. “Bahorel and Pontmercy? Where are they?” he said, feeling hope bloom for the first time, the light of anticipation weak.

“Why this massacre?” Musichetta questioned, tear streaked face aimed skyward. “I do not know of Marius, but I spotted Bahorel in the street, I carried him from the barricade to the edge of the road. He had been dead for hours.”

“Christ,” said Prouvaire, sinking back onto the floor, “How long must my final mistress, Death, play me for a fool?”

“Do not show signs of cowardice now, Monsieur. You survived for a reason, even if that reason is only to feel the pain of fallen comrades. I too could long for death, for two thirds of my soul has been snuffed so quickly, but would it not be their wish to continue their legacy?” 

“What legacy?” Jehan said bitterly.

“Hush,” said Musichetta, visibly trying to stop her weeping, “You sound like Grantaire.”

“His cynicism would be the greatest of joys to me now,” he said, forehead creasing and soul crumbling. Musichetta looked in an equal state.

“And to me,” she whispered, letting him drop his head onto her shoulder and sob loudly, their cries mingling through their embrace.  

~*~

They were told to stand outside while much stronger men stormed into the house and hoisted the bodies about. Prouvaire and Musichetta watched in heavy silence as their closest friends were laid side by side on the street.

Enjolras appeared, limp in an anonymous man’s arms, a mere weight rather than a boy of revolution. He was flung to the ground like a sack of flour. Jehan pushed away from the wall he was leaning on and stormed towards the man. Before he even knew what he was doing, his fist was formed, and flinging itself into the man’s fleshy nose.  

“Have some respect for the fallen!” Prouvaire commanded, the fire of rebellion flaring up once more. In that moment he would have rebuilt the barricade and taken on the whole of France on his own. Musichetta was seconds behind him, enough fury on her face to warn the man a second blow could be directed his way.

“Damn fools, the lot of you.” The man growled, but there was a tired tinge of sadness in his tone. It was the only thing that held both Jehan and Musichetta from hitting him once more. The man slinked back into the house to heave about more fallen young men.

As the sun set and June the sixth prepared to become June the seventh, Musichetta and Jehan Prouvaire stood and gazed upon their friends and lovers, laid out in military formation, more like matches in a matchbox than people.

Dusk settled and they moved closer, knowing their painfully mortal time was running out.

“His good luck charm...” Musichetta sighed, looping a stone necklace from Joly’s neck, she pressed a soft kiss to the icy forehead. She moved to Bossuet and did the same, one hand cupping the cheek so familiar to her, but so unfamiliar in its coldness.

Jehan had laid a hand on each of his friend’s shoulders in turn, wishing there was more he could do than feel heavy and useless. He whispered his final goodbyes to each of them, saying words he knew he would try and write down later, but would be forever lost in the moment. He wished he had flowers to adorn them with, but his soft touch had to suffice.

He moved from Grantaire to Enjolras, still hardly able to look at the bullet holes peppering him. The loss was as unbearable as being trapped in an ocean of storms. He wished he could paint so each and every one of his friends would be forever immortalised, but even with a thousand years of training he would never have enough skill to render them correctly.  
“Goodbye,” Prouvaire said to Enjolras after a winding dialogue that he couldn’t quite put into words. As he turned he knew that he would never again see the faces of those he loved so dearly, those whom his whole life revolved around.

He drew breath into his lungs, hooked his arm around Musichetta’s and turned away. They walked to their empty rooms on opposite sides of the city, wondering how morning could possibly come again when the world had the power to be so spiteful.


	2. Poet: lost for words.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan gets lost in his mind, speaking to the brothers from days gone by, and chances upon Marius Pontmercy's wedding.

Light. All that Jehan could see was light.

He thought perhaps he had died, but he awoke, unable to feel his limbs, the crack in his window freezing his entire room. He tried to feel his face, but could only sense the vague icy impression of form. He had been painted by a vastly unskilled artist.

January had come colder than expected, but such was to be expected when he had mislaid everything that had ever kept his life warm.

The sight of Jehan was no longer that of inquisitive elegance, but of a wreck of exhaustion, that only true despair could elicit. His hair had grown straggly and unkempt. Once it had been more precious than sunshine – he tended it with rose oils and braided its lengths intricately. He no longer could bring himself to do it anymore – he could hardly bring himself to do anything but lie through the day and night, begging for the heady release of sleep. His face was bruised, black circles beneath his eyes, so ungainly against the pale stretch of his skin.  

He lit a pipe, one of his last indulgences. The bleary fog of smoke smoothened out the crinkles in his mind, eased the tension in his shoulders, softened his gaze.

He probably smoked more than he ought to. 

His curtains did not protect him from the blare of noisy sunrise, for he had to sleep wrapped up within them. Naively he had left his bed sheets to dry outside weeks before and upon his return, the line was sincerely absent.

There was no use listing all the things he had lost, for he had lost almost everything.

When he returned from the barricade, all those months ago, his tiny room was no longer his.

He flew up the curled, crooked stairs; longing for something to smoke, or some semblance of the life that lay trapped in the past. Key in shaking fingers, he burst onto his balcony. From up there he could imagine he knew every pedestrian and that each carriage was trundling to a l’ABC meeting. He cried their names to the wind, painting their legacies through each sprawling alley. He considered joining the names by stepping into the air, but fingers white against the banister, he collapsed into screaming, tearing sobs instead.

When night was breaking, his door opened and he was hauled from the balcony and his very apartment, the woman red with veins bursting out of her skin. Jehan weakly fought back, trying to edge back into his room before the door was slammed.

“I truly am sorry,” the landlord said. Jehan had thundered down the stairs to question the man. “I didn’t expect you... I didn’t expect you back.” He hadn’t expected Jehan to survive. “This family have been waiting for a room for months.”

“That is my room!” Jehan pointed through the ceilings, grief pouring though his veins and crunching into his mouth as rage. “Fine!” he shouted upon the silence, “Where are my belongings?”

The landlord was quiet, for Jehan’s possessions had already been auctioned off.

 

He returned to university, blood still cuffing his sleeves, madness still brewing in his eyes. The clothes he had faced his death in, were the only ones he owned.

They had not expected him to survive either. He could see it in their eyes: the raised eyebrows, the firm set of mouth. He sat alone in a sea of desks: the predetermined seats of his friends, empty. Not a soul dared to move closer.

Jehan learnt he was quite a fine actor, for he clawed his way through weeks at the place. Lessons were a masquerade ball, and with earnest, solemn studying, he masked the raw wounds within himself. He didn’t need his failing lungs or his unbeating heart while he held a pen between his fingers.

Though his jitteriness could be disguised as a fervent lust for knowledge, the sound of quills scratching drove him close to insanity. Concentrating on assignments felt more foolish than he could imagine and instead he scribbled down poem after poem, all slashed through with the most violent, atrocious words: all _victim_ and _vicious_ and _eviscerate_ and _obliterate_.

“Prouvaire!” called a jolly voice one afternoon. Jehan juddered in his seat, twisting to see not a ghost, but a boy with scrubbed red cheeks and ears, and a too-tight cravat. “We’re spending the evening in the Corinth... care to join us?”

The boy turned scarlet and half an apology trembled from his lips as Jehan scowled.

“No,” said Jehan, never wanting to lay eyes on the Corinth again in his life.

Besides the fact that the Corinth held the revolutionaries’ ghosts, and Jehan had no money, the man, Guilbeault, held no quality that Jehan redeemed.

 

He thought back to one of their first meetings, Enjolras quivering with an anxiety, which over time, had simmered to a more relaxed fervour. 

“What of Guilbeault?” Combeferre scratched the edge of his nose with his quill. “He seems well-meaning.”

“He is too enamoured in his dalliances with the bourgeois,” Enjolras scoffed. At this early stage, Les Amis was only four strong: Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac and Prouvaire. “What of that Grantaire boy?”

“Yes, _what of him,_ Enjolras?” Courfeyrac smiled wickedly. Jehan had choked on the suffocating grasp of a laugh.

“Yes, I know him,” Jehan offered. “I shall invite him to our next meeting.”

Now, Jehan looked to Grantaire’s empty seat. Had Jehan not invited him, would the cynic still be espousing his philosophies, unasked for, to the room?

It only took days, after Guilbeault’s invitation, before Jehan’s resolve shattered in its entirety. One moment he was taking notes, the next he was stood – the professor’s steely gaze trained on him – and he left.

He never went back – his seat, amidst the array of other empty ones, was probably still vacant.

 

Leaving university barred his access to the library, which was where he had been sleeping most nights.

 

He slept rough, though the streets of Paris were brutal past sundown. He earned a nasty gash down his cheek from some drunkard with a knife. “Vive la France!” Jehan had barked, startling the intoxicated fool into confusion, tasting the thin smear of blood that had painted onto his lips.

 

With nothing but abject nothingness, he returned to the Musain.

People say that if you lose something, it is wise to return to where you had it last, and the Cafe Musain was where Jehan had last possessed an ounce of happiness. Perhaps, once more, he could remember what it was like to laugh.

The sight of the Musain was the greeting of an old friend for the first time in years; warm, familiar, yet overshadowed with a strange distance, unnoticeable before. 

They had a room; because _of course they had a room for Jehan Prouvaire._ The owner eyed him morosely.

“Damn shame,” he said, spitting the words through broken teeth.

“I cannot pay for a room,” Jehan interrupted, “I can work for it.”

The bartender nodded, throwing him a cloth and leaving him in charge of the bar.

The days had stretched out, and somehow – _somehow –_ the barricade had fallen eight months before.

 

Jehan was eight months older; his friends were not.

His hair was eight months longer, clothes eight months more worn, though his body was eight _years_ more tired. 

It had been eight months, and he still could not set a foot within the backroom, where the l’ABC meetings had taken place. It was always empty.

Jehan had never noticed before, but Les Amis had been the most devoted patrons of the Musain. In countless evenings spent there over the years, it had felt like the room would burst – bodies and noise spilling out across the bar and into the streets. In the shadows, Prouvaire could see Combeferre and Enjolras debating animatedly, the phantom crashes of fists against tables creaking in the silence.   

Enjolras turned his head, fixing a severe gaze towards Prouvaire. The sternness broke into a smile, but all too quickly Jehan remembered the bullet holes in his leader’s chest, and the mass grave they were all sleeping in.  

The shadow surged, and Prouvaire, believing it still to be a hallucination, stumbled back in his step, as a body lurched into the light of the doorway.

 

“Prouvaire, my good man!” came a rich tone, laden with the finesse only money could bring.

Marius Pontmercy stood plumper than he had been eight months before, with roses in his cheeks and a brightness to his eyes. The smile on his lips was clumsy and too wide, like it didn’t know how to fit on his face.

“ _Marius_?” Prouvaire frowned, “What in God’s name are you doing back there? What of England? What of marriage?”

Prouvaire had crossed paths with the man months before, where Marius had cried to see a survivor besides himself. He had said he was to move to England with his sweetheart, and that a letter would arrive to Prouvaire’s establishment within the month.

Prouvaire had not heard a thing.

“The plans have changed!” the man’s voice was saturated with joy, “We are to be married tomorrow! At Saint-Louis!”

“Congratulations,” Jehan said candidly, the barrage of exclamations striking him unnerved. 

“Oh but you must come! You would be my honoured guest... you can invite whoever you please.”

“I have no-one to invite but myself, and I won’t require a full invitation: I’m dreadful conversation these days. Half an invitation would suffice.”

“Good God, Prouvaire! Are you unwell?”

“It could be said so, yes. Like an artist without a subject, I have been rendered useless – a revolutionary with no revolution. I have no subject and I have no revolution – I’m a husk of a man! An empty shell without a godforsaken beach....” Jehan smiled manically, “I apologise, Marius. It is just that I have not spoken frankly for over eight months, and I am afraid it is sending me rather insane.”

Marius’ cheery disposition faltered. “I see,” he said blindly. “Well the offer still stands... Are you sure there is no-one you can discuss this with?”

“Marius, within the realm of the living, _you_ are my dearest friend, and we haven’t spoken for half a year. I hardly can spell your name, for Christ’s sake.”

Marius shifted, far paler than he had been before, “It is easily misspelled,” he tried to console, but failed rather magnificently. “Nevertheless, I have a meeting I must attend,” he wrapped his scarf tightly around his neck, “Please come, Jehan. Your presence would be so greatly appreciated.”

Marius whirled from the bar before Jehan could say another word.

 

 _Fine,_ reasoned Jehan, he would go. He would go dressed in his finest clothes, the very garments he almost died in, and pretend his life was full and joyous, as it certainly should have been for a man of such few years.

He would apologise to Marius and meet his bride, be swept in a fleeting greeting before they thanked a host of other guests, and then he would hover within a crowd for a day, before returning to the emptiness of his room.

Perhaps he would meet someone with a beautiful soul, who would let him lose himself in them for the day, or, if the circumstances played out right, the long, cold night also.

The thought of a night of breathless oblivion held a shade of appeal, but far less than the pied piper calling of his pipe did. 

 

He lit the flame, heard the crackle, inhaled deeply, and let the tension and strings of his mind tug away. Amidst the realms of smoke, his friends appeared one by one, gauze-like figures of memories stitched together.

Jehan smiled blissfully.

Through glazed, half-shut eyes, he welcomed his friends back into his room and sat with them as the evening ripened.

“Have you seen the news, Jehan Prouvaire?” asked Combeferre, solemn in his spectacles, eyes dark.

“I close my eyes to it, these days,” Prouvaire replied, letting his lashes graze his cheeks.

“Have you _heard_ the news, Jehan Prouvaire?” Enjolras echoed, ferociously carved in gold.

“I close my ears to it too,” Jehan laughed, feeling as light as a petal.

“I heard Marius Pontmercy was getting married,” said Grantaire with a laugh from his crooked mouth.

“ _You_ heard so, for _I_ heard so. You are utterly in my head,” Prouvaire mused, “It is a shame, really.”

“That he is to be married, or that we are in your head?” Bahorel asked, voice steady and rich as an oak tree.

“One or the other,” Jehan voiced, “Perhaps both, or neither. I am no longer in a fit state of mind to decide.”

“Should he not be married?” Joly asked lightly, ghost of a smile on his lips.

“He should simply not be alive, my friend,” Prouvaire said, “And nor should I, yet we shall be lording up the afternoon as if we are Kings. Only the morning will play our guillotine!”

“You have lived many mornings that we have not...”

“My dear Grantaire, I have not lived at all.”  

“You have lived plenty.”

“I did not imagine you up so you would disagree with me,” Prouvaire grumbled.

The barman strode past the crack in Jehan’s door and shut it quietly, ignoring the strong opium scent curling through and the poet’s muffled voice babbling incoherently.

~*~

Morning came and Jehan roused from the floor, muscles stiff, eyelids barely able to crack open in the winter sun.

He donned his finest outfit, full of silk from older days and stitches stitched before his world rung hollow. His waistcoat, still speckled with faint blood around the hems, let him masquerade as the Jehan Prouvaire of days gone by.

 

It was no task for him to find the church. For one, he had spent a brief period of his life enamoured by God, and had lost many hours with his head bowed in the pews. God bored him after a few weeks, however, and he had not been back since. Yet still, the pealing of the bells seemed to clang throughout Paris, declaring the love of Marius Pontmercy to the city. It was an easy place to find.

 

Jehan swept in, surrounded by finery in its most frivolous forms. Long sheens of skirts and gloves flickered past him, the faces flushed with the joys of painless living.

Jehan himself had taken such care with his appearance that he slotted right into place. He had never been poor before, and events such as weddings or parties had been commonplace in his youth. His long, tawny hair was tied loosely in a bow at the back of his neck, flowing in neat waves across his shoulders. He wore a lovely smile that was designed in older days, as well.

 

“Marius Pontmercy!” he said evenly, lips parting delicately. “I must apologise for my behaviour yesterday,” he swept forwards and kissed the air besides Marius’ cheeks.

Marius looked rather baffled, eyes swivelling in their sockets. “Oh,” he said, in his gentle tones. “My word! I didn’t expect you to come!”

“I couldn’t miss it,” Prouvaire said, “And this must be your lovely bride. It is a pleasure to meet you, Madame Pontmercy.”

“Cosette,” she said with a girlish giggle, the joy unhidden in her bright cheeks and brighter eyes.

“You seem happy, Marius,” Prouvaire said. Marius blinked wildly; there had been a hint of accusation growling in the pits of Prouvaire’s words. 

“Yes,” he said. “We are.” His eyebrows were quivering on the edge of a frown. “We would be happier if we heard from you more often,” he said.

As Jehan opened his mouth to retort, someone grabbed Marius by the hand and started speaking fondly, a gleam in his eyes that only reminiscence could bring.

Cosette whirled around to welcome the newcomer, and hid her lovely face from Jehan Prouvaire, who slipped away soundlessly.

Only, a trail of newcomers lined the edges of the whole day, and not once did the couple look around to wonder what had happened to the poet.

 

 _‘Why should Marius Pontmercy live?’_ Jehan thought bitterly. _‘There were far finer men than him.’_

It should have been Enjolras. It should have been Grantaire.

It should have been them all.

But _especially_ Enjolras and Grantaire – the two of them had something rarely found: utter polarity. It used to seem like the fearless leader and his cynic were what kept the world in orbit, kept the tides rolling, Enjolras’ most ferocious, fiery moments were the sun to Grantaire’s melancholic moon.

Since the rebellion, Jehan had spent barely a jot of time marvelling in the beauty of the stars or the planets; it all seemed rather futile without the two young revolutionaries who were so much of the sky personified.  

 

He was talking to a rather dull young lady, adorned with a shy smile and deep brown eyes.

“Do you not think there is, at least, _some_ good in everyone?” she asked, eyes ablaze as if she were enraptured in the most interesting conversation her life could create.

“No,” Jehan said bluntly, “I am hesitant to believe that there is _any_ good in _anyone.”_ He threw the free drink down his throat, the tartness incredibly bright against his tongue.

“That’s an awful way to think,” she exclaimed, eyebrows drawn together as if on a hinge.

“And so, I suppose, I am an awful person for thinking so,” Jehan had his eyes on someone else in the crowd.

“I don’t like to think that _anyone_ is an awful person.”

“Then you are a fool,” said Jehan, “Good day.”

And as he walked away, he remembered the way he used to be: not an unkindness to spare for a soul. His whole life had relied upon being forged of gentleness and beautiful words, but the phrase he had spat was neither gentle nor beautiful.

He turned. The girl’s face was split open in shock, lips parted, eyes drooping wide. Prouvaire gave a military salute, a frown moulded to his features.

 

“Do I know you?” A voice pierced through Jehan’s consciousness, and he surveyed the young man’s face, searching for a trace of familiarity. He was fair, with flaxen hair and golden freckles. Within his eyes shone the dark flare that pulled Les Amis together.

“I don’t believe so,” Prouvaire said blandly. The boy’s lips curled into a smile, like the sun was bursting from his cheeks.

“It must be something about you,” he said, pulsing an inch closer to Prouvaire. “Théodore,” he said, and Jehan could tell from the blaze in his pupils that Théodore was searching for a bedchamber to spend the night in.

“Jehan Prouvaire,” he said, inching closer still, but leaving enough space for them to appear proper. Understanding passed between their glance.

“Pleasure, Jehan Prouvaire.”

~*~

Jehan barely waited for the sun to rise before he lit his pipe.

“ _Opium?_ ” Théodore asked blearily, rubbing the remnants of sleep from his eyes. The night had ruined him into a scribbled sketch of a man.

Jehan’s lips curled around the mouthpiece, letting the smoke curl into his lungs. “Do you wish for some?”

He exhaled against Théodore’s lips: other things than smoking could bring oblivion.  

The strong scent hazed around the young man, whose pale eyebrows folded down across his eyes. “Horrible substance,” Théodore said softly, recoiling and glancing around as if it were the first time he was seeing Jehan’s room.

“I beg to disagree,” Jehan laughed lazily, letting his eyes slide shut.

“I have matters to attend to, this morning, so I shall bid you farewell,” Théodore said, eyeing Jehan expectantly.

 

Jehan said nothing, head lolled back, lips letting out a trail of smoke. All he wore was the makeshift sheet, a curtain, draped over the planes of his skin as if he was an artist’s subject.

Théodore frowned. “Don’t you think you’re missing a purpose?”

“Having a _purpose_ is to bathe oneself in blindness and idiocy,” Jehan laughed, “I have attempted it many times before.”

The young lover seemed on the edge of a decision, before he rushed to Jehan and perched on the bed.

“Do you know of the revolution, Jehan?”

“What revolution?”

“The Revolution against the King.”

“Oh,” said Jehan, “That one.”

“You know of the movement?”

“Likely more than you,” Jehan smiled blissfully. “I died at the barricades in Paris eight months ago.”

“ _You were at the barricades last year?_ ” Théodore sounded vastly impressed; awe flooded his tones. “Would you do it again?”  

“Die?” Jehan asked, “From what I recall, it is a rather permanent solution. One usually does not indulge in the action more than once.”

“But, Comrade, you did _not_ die. You lived to fight again.”

“You sound like Enjolras,” Jehan said, eyes stained red in the sunrise.

“Who is Enjolras?”

“You can meet him,” the smile on Jehan’s face was one of pure ecstasy. “He is stood right there,” he raised a finger to the empty corner of the room.

 

Théodore’s shoulders slumped. “I believe you may have smoked too much.”

“I _believed_ we were in agreement,” Jehan said, tone suddenly sharp. “The gratification of the night ended with the sunrise. Your occupation of my room should have ended with it too.”

Théodore gathered his belongs, a bright red smear stinging across his cheeks. “If you change your mind, ask for me at the university.”

“I shan’t.”

“What a waste of life,” Théodore snapped.

“I could say the same to you,” Jehan said, fixing the man with an unfocused gaze.

 

“ _What has happened to Jehan Prouvaire?”_ came a voice. Jehan turned his head from Théodore, who was storming to the door. The words had come from Enjolras.

“He died alongside you,” Prouvaire said.

Théodore turned. Prouvaire’s eyes were swimming, flickering to the corner of the room, mouth slack. “Pardon?”

 _“Where has your beauty gone, Jehan Prouvaire?”_ asked Les Amis in unison.

“What is the use of beauty in death?” Jehan asked.

Théodore watched in obscene curiosity.

Jehan’s lips twitched into the words, _“What of your kindness, Jehan Prouvaire?”_ and then in a slightly altered timbre, “What is the use of kindness in death?”

He laughed a haunted laugh and the mutterings grew further incoherent, his eyes vaguer. 

 

The young revolutionary backed against the door, watching the lips that had ensnared his every sense in intricate, heady, divine sentences; now quiver through words like he could not string a pair together.   

He clicked the door together behind him, although the sound was accompanied by a shrill laugh and then a broken sob.

 

_What had happened to Jehan Prouvaire?_

 

The poet had lost his words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An additional chapter I wrote because I was too attached to sweet Jehan to let him go! Poor thing!  
> Thanks so much for reading and please let me know what you think! :D

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first thing I've ever published and I must apologise to both the reader, and my sweet summer child, Jehan. 
> 
> This fic has been saved on my computer for the past few months as: 'jehan sees all his friends dead' which I think is a pretty good summary.  
> I wanted to play with the possibility that Jehan survived his execution, and how he would reflect upon the rebellion's outcome, but I just ended up making myself sad.  
> I would love to hear what you think! :D


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